Nova Arts’ tempOdyssey a strange and funny trip

TempOdyssey begins as the strangest comedy you’ve ever seen about temp hell, and then evolves into something stranger still: the surreal saga of a woman desperate to escape her perceived fate as a bringer of death.

Lest that make Nova Arts Projects’ current outing sound too grim, the play is wildly original, often funny and arguably the freshest thing offered by any Houston theater this summer.

Nova Arts is doing Houston audiences a favor by introducing us to the work of Austin playwright Dan Dietz, whose short plays have been produced at Actors Theater of Louisville’s Humana Festival. Since its 2003 premiere in Austin, tempOdyssey has been produced in Denver, San Diego and Washington, D.C.

Genny, tempOdyssey’s hapless heroine, flees from Atlanta to Seattle (“the anti-Atlanta”) to begin a new life as a temp at Ithaca-techno-solutions. When you note the firm’s title can also be broken down as “Ithacatech, no solutions,” you recognize the sort of verbal playfulness that will color Dietz’s script.

The overbearing Last Day Girl lays down the law for poor Genny. As receptionist, she’s not allowed to leave her desk unmanned – ever. One bathroom break in the morning, one in the afternoon – if she can find someone to sub for her. Her supervisor, the crazed Nepotism Guy, freaks out over the breaking of a pencil.

Alarmed to learn the company makes bombs, Genny’s more obsessed with black holes and the creation of one by scientists – because she’s convinced that she’s trying to outrun one of her own.

“It wasn’t me, it was the black hole,” is her trademark apology.

When she was eight, Genny displayed a rare gift for strangling chickens. Her chicken-farmer parents made her their star chicken choker, bringing prosperity to the family, but leaving Genny cursed. She can’t forget all the deaths inflicted by her hands, the look in those chickens’ eyes. Genny found that all the people with whom she forged a close bond became ill and died of such illnesses as bronchitis or throat cancer – but really (Genny feels) “choked” by the touch of her hands.

Since the fellow temp who becomes Genny’s ally is identified in the program as Dead Body Boy, I’m not spoiling any secret by disclosing that Genny has not lost her fatal touch. But as the story has long since veered into absurdist fantasy, the garrulous victim refuses to behave as if he’s dead. Meanwhile, Genny winds up in possession of a bomb and contemplates blowing up herself, Ithacatech and possibly much of Seattle, while the Security Guy tries to talk her out of it.

tempOdyssey’s post-modern melange of genres and styles is all over the place. It moves from satire of office life to cosmic matters, with wild non-sequitur rants and mock lectures by lab-coated scientists along the way. What Dietz really seems to be getting at is our frustrating helplessness before the whims of fate.

The loose parallel to Homer’s Odyssey goes undeveloped, but that hardly matters with all the other stuff Dietz tosses. If the writing is messy, it’s also smart, sarcastic and offbeat, registering a distinctive voice. Dietz has a neat way of expressing an idea, as when Genny explains that a black hole requires just two ingredients, zero and infinity “clinging together like teenage lovers in a bad pop song.”

Or when, told to smile, Genny replies “What the difference, they’re just teeth.”

tempOdyssey constitutes a challenge for a young company like Nova Arts and one appreciates the enthusiasm with which director Clint Hopper and his cast respond. His staging conveys the bizarre tale with energy, punch and some neat visuals, like the floating scientific formulae projected onto the set.

Amy Hopper does good work as the unusual protagonist: forlorn, cowed, bewildered, yet with a strange quiet power. She’s dangerous, yet sympathetic.

The characters surrounding her are mostly mad eccentrics, and the director has them gesture and pose in exaggerated manner. Bernardo Cubria creates a distinctive character of the sly, wry, knowing Dead Body Boy. Jenni Rebecca Stephenson is aptly domineering as the bossy Last Day Girl, and especially funny as Fran, a sort of Supreme Being Temp. Paul Salazar contorts himself like a young Jerry Lewis as the explosively physical Nepotism Guy. Sean Patrick Judge plays Genny’s sour, overall-clad Daddy in comparatively straight mode, while Salvador Chevez serves up an amusing cameo as the black hole-explicating Scientist.

To sum up, I’m put in mind of an amusing line from Kander and Ebb’s Flora, the Red Menace: “It’s refreshing to meet someone odd, for a change.”

Just as it’s refreshing to encounter a likably odd play like tempOdyssey.